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Phelps Wins 7th Gold With 0.01 to Spare

Michael Phelps, in lane five, takes his last breath as he hits the wall for his 7th gold medal in Beijing. Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

BEIJING — After 3,200 meters and 16 races, Michael Phelps’s pursuit of Mark Spitz came down to a single stroke. With five meters to go in the 100-meter butterfly final Saturday morning, Phelps realized he had misjudged the finish.

He had two choices: glide to the wall, kicking like crazy, or take an extra, awkward half-stroke. To his left, Milorad Cavic was having the race of his life. Phelps, who was seventh at the turn, had no room for error.

Most swimmers would have impulsively chosen to glide, but Phelps proved by the slimmest of margins what sets him apart. Following his instincts, he took an alligator-arm stroke and touched the wall. Cavic, a California-born Serb, hit the timing pad in full glide.

Both swimmers spun around and stared at the video screen. In the moment it took the scoreboard to unscramble the results, the tension inside the National Aquatics Center was palpable.

Phelps was timed in 50.58, a personal best and an Olympic record. Cavic, a California-Berkeley graduate, was one-hundredth of a second behind. Phelps had caught Spitz by a whisker. It was his seventh gold medal, tying Spitz’s record haul from the 1972 Munich Games and earning him a $1 million bonus from Speedo, one of his sponsors.

“I’m really at a loss for words,” Phelps said. “I’m excited. I just don’t know what to say.”

Serbian swimming officials had plenty to say, protesting the result. Officials from FINA, the sport’s international governing body, broke down the video to the 10-thousandth of a second, then upheld Phelps’s victory. “It’s very clear that the Serbian swimmer touched second after Michael Phelps,” the FINA referee Ben Ekumbo said.

FINA’s executive director, Cornel Marculescu, said the Serbian team was then given the chance to watch the footage themselves and did not choose to take their protest to the second and final level by seeking recourse from a jury of appeal.

The race awakened echoes of the men’s 100 butterfly final in 1988 when another Berkeley product, Matt Biondi, lost a late lead and the gold, by the same wafer-thin margin, to Anthony Nesty of Suriname.

Cavic, 24, described it as “the most devastating loss you can have at the Olympics.” He added: “People will be bringing this up for years. They’ll say, ‘You won this race.’ ”

He was just getting warmed up. “If we got to do this again,” he said, “I would win it.”

Cavic will never be confused with a shrinking violet. Before this week, his claim to fame was getting himself barred from the European championships for wearing a T-shirt on the medal stand that read, “Kosovo is Serbia.”

On Friday, after posting the fastest time in the semifinals, a 50.92, Cavic said it would be good for the sport if Phelps was thwarted in his bid for eight gold medals. Phelps’s coach, Bob Bowman, read Cavic’s quote Saturday morning and debated whether to share the comment with Phelps.

He had a flashback to the Athens Games in 2004, when Phelps’s margin of victory over Ian Crocker had been four-hundredths of a second. This race also figured to be tight, as only 35-hundredths of a second separated the top four qualifiers. Bowman decided to play the quote card.

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“When Bob told me, I was like, O.K,” Phelps said. “When people say things like that, it fires me up more than anything.”

When will swimmers learn not to take pokes at Phelps? Before the 4x100 freestyle relay final on Monday, Fred Bousquet of France talked trash about the Americans. The United States team got the last word, with Phelps setting an American record in his leadoff leg and Jason Lezak reeling in the Frenchman Alain Bernard in the final meter.

The Americans’ margin of victory in that race was eight-hundredths of a second, which seemed almost cushy compared to Saturday’s finish. Phelps has won every which way this week — by large margins in the 400-meter individual medley, 200 freestyle and the 200 individual medley and by standing on the deck in the 4x100 and 4x200 freestyle relays. He even won the 200 butterfly with his goggles filled with water.

It boggled Phelps’s mind to think he had won back-to-back Olympic golds in the 100 butterfly by a total margin of five-hundredths of a second. “I guess my two finishes over the last four years have been pretty good,” he said.

Cavic was left to wonder if he should have shaved his knuckles. After his warm-up, Cavic said his coach, Mike Bottom, came to him with a pair of clippers and shaved the hairs behind his neck, as if he knew Cavic was going to be neck-to-neck with Phelps. “Everything counts,” Cavic said, “but again, with one hundredth of a second it’s something you can’t show.”

For the first time in these Games, Phelps failed to set a world record in a final, falling 18-hundredths of a second shy of the three-year-old mark held by Crocker, who was fourth in 51.13. On this day, touching out Cavic and drawing even with Spitz was plenty good enough.

“It seems like every day I’m in a dream world,” Phelps said. “Sometimes you have to pinch yourself to see if it’s real.”

In a joint interview on NBC, Spitz told Phelps, “What you did tonight was epic,” adding later, “I never thought for one moment you were out of that race.”

During Phelps’s news conference after the race, a reporter said to him: “Obviously you are the king. I’m sure you’re going to have eight medals. What’s your next dream?”

The woman was speaking accented English, but the 23-year-old Phelps looked as if something had been lost in translation. He never counts his victories before they are won, not even when his eighth gold is riding on Sunday’s 4x100 medley relay, which the Americans have never lost at a non-boycotted Olympics.

“It’s not over yet,” said Phelps, who will swim third in the relay, on the butterfly leg. “I really think the Australian team looks great for the relay. It’s going to be a great race.”

Phelps loves the chase. If he passes Spitz, he will not rest long. There is always another goal to go after.

Christopher Clarey contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: With Desperate Lunge, Phelps Wins Gold No. 7. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe